FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



287 



however, entirely continuous, but it changed 

 its place frequently and sometimes came out 

 to drink. It lost between a ninth and a 

 twelfth of its weight ; molted late in May 

 or early in June, sometimes also in July, but 

 rarely twice a year. It is very tame and 

 very curious. It was probably two years 

 old when captured, and was consequently, 

 at the beginning of 1897, about fifteen ; and 

 it shows signs of age in its diminishing 

 agility, growth, and appetite. 



Of the stations in the international series 

 for cloud observations, Prof. Frank H. Bige- 

 low said in the American Association that 

 the United States has fourteen. The object 

 of observations at all these points is to deter- 

 mine the actual circulation of the atmosphere 

 at different cloud levels. Heretofore indica- 

 tions have been worked out from the surface 

 of the ground, where the circulation is much 

 distorted. The action of storms is usually 

 strongest two or three miles above the sur- 

 face. The author criticised the conclusions 

 of German meteorologists, who have worked 

 on theories by mathematical processes, as 

 being ideal and not conforming to actual con- 

 ditions found in Nature. He showed by maps 

 how storms run around rather in the upper 

 isotherms than on the ground. The form of 

 these lines is largely determine I by the rela- 

 tion of land and ocean. The result is that 

 the upper currents, which would run smoothly 

 otherwise, become distorted by their passage 

 over the laud. Storms are abnormal parts of 

 the general circulation, and have the force of 

 that circulation behind them. 



In his experiments in photography from 

 kites at Enlaure, near Labruguiere, France, 

 M. Arthur Batut observed that when he flew 

 his kite with a north wind, though it was a 

 strong one, % his kite kept its balance in the 

 air without violent jerkings ; while with wind 

 from the south or southeast, unless it was 

 extremely light, the kite dodged hither and 

 thither and was extremely irregular in its 

 movements, as if there were eddies in the 

 air stratum. The north wind reached En- 

 laure after blowing over a plain country, 

 with only gentle undulations ; while the south 

 and southeast winds came from over a broken 

 country. Aeronauts who have suffered from 

 caprices of the wind before reaching an area 

 of calm in the atmosphere have sometimes 



ascribed their trouble to eddies in the lower 

 air strata occasioned by irregularities in the 

 surface of the ground. The irregularities in 

 the flying of the kite may have had a like 

 origin. 



Of the physical and mental training 

 gathered — laboriously and somewhat waste- 

 fully, it may be — at the joiner's bench, in 

 the fitting and turning shops, and the forge 

 during the old course of mechanical engi- 

 neering apprenticeship, Mr. G. F. Deacon 

 expresses himself convinced that the kind of 

 knowledge which comes of thoughtful chip- 

 ping and filing and turning and forging, 

 though only applied to a few of the mate- 

 rials with which in after-life the engineer 

 has to deal, are quite as important to his 

 future sense of Tightness in constructive de- 

 sign as tables of density and strength. The 

 use of such work is not merely to teach one 

 the parts and combinations of any particular 

 machine ; to a still higher degree it is the 

 insensible mastery of a much more subtle 

 knowledge or mental power — the application 

 of the senses of sight and touch and force, 

 it may be of other senses also, to the deter- 

 mination of the nature of things. 



An interesting memoir was recently pre- 

 sented to the Paris Academy of Medicine by 

 Dubousquet Labordaire and Duchesne con- 

 cerning a group of families at Saiut-Ouen, an 

 industrial district on the outskirts of Paris, 

 which appear to have been immune from tu- 

 berculosis for many generations. The fami- 

 lies are at present ninety-eight in number, 

 and consist of five hundred and eleven per- 

 sons. No cases of tuberculosis have oc- 

 curred among them, as far back as the 

 memory of the oldest inhabitant reaches. 

 They are a farming people of excellent sani- 

 tary habits, and rarely or never mix either 

 socially or by marriage with immigrants 

 from other sections. 



Ever since aluminum has been used in 

 construction difficulties have arisen in solder- 

 ing it. The following contribution to Nature 

 by A. T. Stanton is of interest in this con- 

 nection : If cadmium iodide be fused on an 

 aluminum plate, decomposition of the salt 

 occurs long before the melting point of the 

 aluminum is reached. The result is gener- 

 ally the violent evolution of iodine vapor, 

 and the formation of an alloy of cadmium and 



